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GWJ Conference Call Episode 305

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Firefall Major Beta Update, Sound Shapes, Driver: San Francisco, FTL, The Trouble With Talking to The Press, A Spec Ops: The Line Spoiler Section, Your Emails and more!

This week Shawn, Elysium, Julian and Rob Zacny talk about developer relations with the press. After the credits, a spoiler section for Spec Ops: The Line!

To contact us, email [email protected]! Send us your thoughts on the show, pressing issues you want to talk about or whatever else is on your mind. You can even send a 30 second audio question or comment (MP3 format please) if you're so inclined.

Loved the spoiler section as well, regret not having the time or inclination to actually play it as it's the kind of game I love... FPS's aren't (though I worked my way through Bioshock... so can SpecOps be that much harder?)

Apropos to highlightlng developers, I just wanted to throw in this link to portraits of the Uncharted team, shot by a teammate: http://kotaku.com/5936432/beautiful-... . It's great when the men and women who make our games possible are brought out as human beings. True, indie firms have a bigger incentive to do this because if the person leaves the company is gone, while the big studios have people wander in and out and have less incentive to build up that relationship. When I did new media marketing we were always trying to convince clients to do this, and it runs against organizational DNA even when people in the orgs have really long tenures. It's too bad as I think it would make the game industry a more human place.

On another note, when I first got They Might Be Giants "Flood" as a freshman in college I played it over and over again, while I was playing a kinda crappy computer RPG called "Tunnels and Trolls." Now when I listen to Flood, I occasionally flash back to that game, even though I have no other real reason to remember it.

It's a riff on Heart of Darkness, and the Kurtz character is named "Konrad"? Are there any Apocalypse Now shoutouts to go with that?

Yeah, I took issue when people were treating it as super special, especially since a few of those people were noted Far Cry 2 fans.

Conrad has a lot to answer for. 'Heart of Darkness' seems to be the literary equivalent of 'Seven Samurai.' It's THE novel to be remade in another setting but, unlike samurai, which invariably ends up with a decent film, I find the results of Heart of Darkness reimaginings to be disappointing at best (I didn't actually enjoy the original book that much.)

Just got around to listening to this today. Still need to finish e-mails and listen to the spoiler section, though I'm excited to hear what you have to say.

On things like Previews, while I was unemployed I spent some time doing writing for GamersDailyNews.com. While I never thought to actually contact the developer and discuss his game or plans with him for some odd reason (though I think I would have needed to get it from my "boss" anyway), I just remember playing the thing and making so many critical notes in my head.

Basically, I was left wanting to say "This game needs to make these changes by release", which isn't what a preview is supposed to be. That's feedback, and it should be just for the developer. But at the same time, I felt like trying to discuss everything in a positive manner was omitting information. The game was simply not ready to be played yet, but here I was playing it and supposed to say...what?

It was frustrating, and when I realized I am not a fan of having to write previews. They are purely marketing material, and that's not what I wanted to be writing.